Mastering Parlays: Choosing the Right Legs

When constructing your parlay, you might want to resist the urge to include heavy favorites or chase high odds by adding numerous alternative markets. These are the types of decisions that will crush your bankroll. You could instead focus on markets you understand well and have data to support your betting decisions. For example, taking the New York Mets to have a team total score of over 3.5 against the Philadelphia Phillies at good odds in a game you studied and understand is a good bet.

Adding your second leg as the Denver Broncos in a completely different sport to score over 14.5 in the total game against the Miami Dolphins because it is a plus bet in a market you don’t understand is a bad second-leg bet for your parlay. This is even more true if the Broncos haven’t scored over 14.5 in their last three games, but you’re taking them because they increase the payout of your parlay by a long shot—over, let’s say, taking the Miami Marlins to win in the first five innings with their best pitcher on the mound at good odds.

There are a ton of tools online that you can use to build your parlays. Oddshopper has a fancy parlay builder, but you’ll likely need to pay.

What I do is just put my parlays on my Action Network account as I’m strategizing the bets I want to place manually. Then I get a general idea of the payout and risk from there. The free version of this application is sufficient.